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International collaboration in Brazilian science: financing and impact

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Abstract

The study of international collaborations can help in understanding the benefits of such relationships and aid in developing national financing policies. In this paper, the international collaboration of Brazilian scientists was studied using SciVal® and Incites® database, looking at its effect on the universities, financing agencies and different areas of knowledge and research topic clusters. Cluster and principal component analyses of scientometric data were carried out. While the results confirmed known knowledge that international collaboration increases impact, this study shows that Brazilian researchers are contributing to prominent research topics worldwide, in all areas of knowledge. This finding is contrary to several points of view that identify Brazil as a regional and not an international partner in science. Important also to note the impact of Brazilian authors in international collaboration that is well above the world mean. The collaboration of Brazil with foreign partners brings benefits for both sides, creating the opportunity of Brazilian research access to financing from international agencies. Increases in measures of impact are also seen for both sides. Foreign partners likewise benefit from higher impact factors in the same topic cluster, when collaborating with Brazilian partners. Publishing open access in high impact journals is fundamental for maintaining Brazilian science at the forefront.

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Acknowledgements

To CAPES and CNPq for financing. AGSF acknowledges the funding from Fundação Cearense de Apoio ao Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (FUNCAP) through the Cientista Chefe program.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Biological Sciences, Universidade de Brasília, Brasilia, DF, 70910-900, Brazil

    Concepta McManus, Andrea Queiroz Maranhão & Jaime Martins Santana

  2. PUC-RS, Av. Ipiranga 6681, Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil

    Abilio Afonso Baeta Neves

  3. Departamento de Física, Centro de Ciências, Universidade Federal de Ceará, Fortaleza, Ceará, 60440-900, Brazil

    Antonio Gomes Souza Filho

Authors
  1. Concepta McManus
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  2. Abilio Afonso Baeta Neves
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  3. Andrea Queiroz Maranhão
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  4. Antonio Gomes Souza Filho
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  5. Jaime Martins Santana
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Correspondence to Concepta McManus.

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Appendices

Abbreviations

Cit/Doc:

Number of citations per document

CNCI:

Category Normalized Citation Impact of a document is calculated by dividing the actual count of citing items by the expected citation rate for documents with the same document type, year of publication and subject area. This is used in InCites® and based on the Web of Science

CS:

CiteScore of an academic journal is a measure reflecting the yearly average number of citations to recent articles published in that journal

DOAJ:

Directory of Open Access Journals is a community-curated online directory that indexes and provides access to high quality, open access, peer-reviewed journals

DocCit:

Number of documents in the database in the period studied that had at least one citation in the database

FWCI:

Field Weighted Citation Index - is the ratio of the total citations actually received by the denominator’s output, and the total citations that would be expected based on the average of the subject field. Similar to CNCI, this is from SciVal® based on data from Scopus

High:

Highly cited papers are papers that perform in the top 1% based on the number of citations received when compared to other papers published in the same field in the same year

Hot:

Hot papers - are papers published in the last two years that are receiving citations quickly after publication. These papers have been cited enough times in the most recent bimonthly period to place them in the top 0.1% when compared to papers in the same field and added to the database in the same period

Ind:

papers published with Industry Collaboration

Inter:

papers published with International Collaboration

JCR:

Journal Citation Reports (JCR) is a resource tool published annually by Thomson Reuters (formerly ISI) to provide citation and publication data of academic journals in the science and Social Science fields

JIF:

Journal impact factor – A tool for evaluating and comparing journals. It is the average number of times articles from the journal published in the past two years have been cited in the JCR year

JNCI:

The Journal Normalized Citation Impact indicator is a similar indicator to the Normalized Citation Impact, but instead of normalizing per subject area or field, it normalizes the citation rate for the journal in which the document is publishing

OA:

Open Access - is a set of principles and a range of practices through which research outputs are distributed online, free of cost to the reader or other access barrier

Publications in Top Journal Percentiles indicates the extent to which an entity’s outputs are present in the most-cited journals in a database source. This metric calculates how many publications, as an absolute count or a percentage, are in the top 1%, 5%, 10% or 25% of the most-cited journals indexed by the database source. An entity can be an institution, a research group or an individual researcher. In this paper we used %Top1% and %Top10%

Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4:

Quartile rankings are therefore derived for each journal in each of its subject categories according to which quartile of the IF distribution the journal occupies for that subject category. Q1 denotes the top 25% of the IF distribution, Q2 for middle-high position (between top 50% and top 25%), Q3 middle-low position (top 75% to top 50%), and Q4 the lowest position (bottom 25% of the IF distribution). In this paper we used %Q1 and %Q2

Scopus:

is Elsevier’s abstract and citation database launched in 2004 and covers three types of sources: book series, journals, and trade journals. All journals covered in the Scopus database, regardless of who they are published under, are reviewed each year. Searches in Scopus also incorporate searches of patent databases

SJR:

Scimago Journal Rank is a measure of the prestige of scholarly journals. The methodology accounts for number of citations as well as the source of citations, with citations from high prestige journals being worth more than those from journals with lower prestige. The prestige value depends on the field, quality and reputation of the source journals that citing article is published in. The average SJR value for all journals in Scopus is 1.000

SNIP:

Source-normalized Impact per Paper is a field normalised assessment of journal impact. SNIP scores are the ratio of a source’s average citation count and ‘citation potential’. Citation potential is measured as the number of citations that a journal would be expected to receive for its subject field. SNIP allows for direct comparison between fields of research with different publication and citation practices. A journal with a SNIP of 1.0 has the median (not mean) number of citations for journals in that field

STEM:

refers to the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics areas of knowledge

WoS:

Web of Science is a website which provides subscription-based access to multiple databases that provide comprehensive citation data for many different academic disciplines. It was originally owned by the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) and is currently maintained by Clarivate Analytics (previously the Intellectual Property and Science business of Thomson Reuters

Financing Agencies

ANPCyT:

Agencia Nacional de Promoción Científica y Tecnológica - Argentina

ARC:

Australian Research Council

BMBF:

Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung - Federal Ministry of Education and Research - Germany

CNRS:

Centre national de la recherche scientifique- French National Centre for Scientific Research

Colciencias:

Administrative Department of Science, Technology and Innovation – Colombia

Conacyt:

Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnologia - Mexico

Conicet:

National Scientific and Technical Research Council (Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas) - Argentina

Conicyt:

Comisión Nacional de Investigación Científica y Tecnológica - Chile

DAAD:

Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst - German Academic Exchange Service

DOE:

Department of Energy - USA

EPSRC:

Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council -UK

ANR:

French National Research Agency - L’Agence nationale de la recherche

ERC:

European Research Council

EU:

European Union

FCT:

Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia – Portugal - Foundation for Science and Technology

Humboldt:

Alexander von Humboldt Foundation - Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung - Germany

INFN:

Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare - National Institute for Nuclear Physics - Italy

NIAID:

National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases – USA

NHMRC:

National Health and Medical Research Council - Australia

CIHR:

Canadian Institutes of Health Research

WHO:

World Health Organization

MRC UK:

Medical Research Council UK

NIH:

National Institute of Health – USA

NSF:

National Science Foundation – USA

DFG:

Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft – German Research Foundation

NSERC:

Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada

NSFC:

National Natural Science Foundation of China

STFC:

Science and Technology Facilities Council - UK

USDA:

United States Department of Agriculture

Brazilian Financing Agencies

Capes:

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (Ministry of education)

CNPq:

National Council for Scientific and Technological Development - Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico

Fapemig:

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de Minas Gerais -Minas Gerais State Agency for Research and Development

Fapergs:

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de Rio Grande do Sul

Faperj:

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado do Rio de Janeiro

Fapesp:

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo

Finep:

Financiadora de Estudos e Projetos, or Funding Authority for Studies and Projects

Fund. Araucaria:

Fundação de Apoio à Ciência, Tecnologia e Inovação do Paraná

Brazilian Universities and Research Institutions

CBPF:

Centro Brasileiro de Pesquisas Físicas

Embrapa:

Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation

Fiocruz:

Fundação Oswaldo Cruz

PUCRJ:

Pontifícia Universidade Católica de Rio de Janeiro

PUCRS:

Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul

UEL:

Universidade Estadual de Londrina

UEM:

Universidade Estadual de Maringá

UERJ:

Universidade do estado de Rio de Janeiro

UFBa:

Universidade Federal de Bahia

UFC:

Universidade Federal de Ceará

UFF:

Universidade Federal Fluminense

UFMG:

Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais

UFPB:

Universidade Federal de Paraiba

UFPE:

Universidade Federal de Pernumbuco

UFPR:

Universidade Federal de Paraná

UFRGS:

Universidade Federal de Rio Grande de Sul

UFRJ:

Universidade Federal de Rio de Janeiro

UFRN:

Universidade Federal de Rio Grande do Norte

UFSC:

Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina

UnB:

Universidade de Brasilia

UNESP:

Universidade Estadual Paulista Júlio de Mesquita Filho

Unicamp:

Universidade Estadual de Campinas

Unifesp:

Universidade Federal de São Paulo

USP:

Universidade de São Paulo

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McManus, C., Baeta Neves, A.A., Maranhão, A.Q. et al. International collaboration in Brazilian science: financing and impact. Scientometrics 125, 2745–2772 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-020-03728-7

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